Installing VS Code

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free and open-source code editor developed by Microsoft.

To install it on your system open the VS Code home page and download the installer for your operating system (we assume, it's Windows 11).

Run the installer, and follow the on-screen instructions.

In case of any problems, please refer to the official installation guide.

Adding Extensions

Visual Studio Code is a very powerful editor, but can be more useful with extensions. Extensions are small programs that add new features to VS Code.

We will need two extensions for our work: one for working with WSL and another for Python development.

First start a WSL session using PowerShell:

> wsl ~

And launch VS Code with the following command:

code

If this is the first time you doing this, it will ask you to install the Remote - WSL extension. Click on the Install button and wait for the installation to complete.

You will need one more extension for Python development. It's called Python and is useful for syntax highlighting and code completion. To install it, press Ctrl+Shift+X to open the Extensions panel, type Python in the search box, and click on the Install button.